Chaos Threads
by Scarabbug
Summary: A single decision made just a split second too slowly, and everything we think we know changes. An alternate reality fanfiction set in the Sonic X Universe.


_**It dawns on me that I really like making fanfiction with "Chaos" in the title. **_

_**Anyway, this story has been drumming about in my brain for a long while, and now I decided I might as well get it started. Some small explanations before we begin – I trust you know how the Sonic X third season ended? After spending over a year in the human world, sonic and his friends discover that the two worlds are merging together, and there is a growing threat of time coming to a dead halt for both of them. Of all existence grinding to a stop. And once everyone got over the fact that this was **_**not**_** a good thing (even if it meant Amy wouldn't get any wrinkles), they decided the only thing to do is send sonic and his friends back home to their world, and close the portal in between the worlds forever. **_

_**Chris was... not altogether happy with this decision. But in the end, he made the same choice that everyone else was forced to make –he let his best friend go, so that the two worlds could be whole again. **_

_**Now that you understand that, you will probably realise what this story is going to be about... **_

* * *

Chaos Threads. 

_There is a theory in existence which states that every possibility in the universe can be countered for by another along a different space time continuum._

_For every choice, every decision, every mistake, there is an opposite reaction, as well as probably a thousand other reactions all across a spectrum. And these choices can come fro anything –from small decisions, or huge ones. From little mistakes or giant successes. Every act and move we make alters our own world irrevocably, even if only for us as individuals. Think of it as a cosmic thread. Sometimes the thread can split and break and unravel. Sometimes what happens in one universe does not happen in another. The way things are is the way things are, but there are always... alternatives. _

_There are many universes. And In one of them, a world ends with a tearing clash and a taste of love and friendship in its vision. A moment's hesitation, a quiet "no" spoken in a hushed whisper, a flash of chaos... an single decision made just a split second too slowly, and everything we think we know changes... _

* * *

The night sky is going haywire again.

It spends most of the day going haywire as well, but it's much harder to make out the fault lines and errors in the daylight. It's only after dark, when shards of the Other World are reflected like a mirror in the moon and shine through onto the earth, that it all becomes particularly clear. It was as if the other world was being viewed through a prism, Grandpa had told him once, and they were only capable of seeing it clearly from certain angles, even though they knew it was always there.

That was how grandpa had explained it back then when Chris was too young to understand the quantum mechanics of it all, but these days, he understands the phenomenon all too well these days,

Just as he understands that a lot of it is probably his fault. At least in part.

The colour is indigo blue this evening, with shards of grey and purple breaking the clouds like backwards lightning. Something clatters in the street, scaring a cat out or something of an alley outside. You got used to the sky changing, after a while.

The clock on his taskbar says two-fifteen a.m. It looks like he lost track of time again.

He's always doing that. Usually he doesn't notice how late it's getting until the only thing giving off any light in the room is the computer screen and the radio has started playing the late night classics hour when chances are no one else in town is listening.

He takes off his reading glasses, knowing Helen is probably going to kill him if he doesn't leave soon. Its Francis's play tomorrow evening; her first performance. She's never had a speaking part before and now the whole thing's got her in a panic – which, where Francis is concerned in a freaking _event_ in itself. And then there's the meeting with The GUN agency in exactly eleven hours and forty-five minutes time… Forty-four minutes time… Forty-four and a half…

Nervous? No, he's not _nervous_… not really. Dad's assured him there's nothing to worry about. Just that they need to do some "editing" of his final report before they go to press (read: the part where someone goes through everything he and Tails have written with a fine tooth come and picks out all the bits they don't want the public knowing about, which will leave the report half the size it's supposed to be and utterly devoid of any revealing information whatsoever)…

…The final chapters that don't actually even _exist_ yet, but…

Great. No pressure. It's not like he hasn't been a little late before. And usually, Tails works out some way via which the public can learn what's really going on out there. They deserve to know, Chris tells himself; they deserve to see more than just what the government wants them to see. They deserve to know the whole truth, and nothing but.

'_Even if that truth will eventually get me taken out by a sniper, or something.'_

He wishes he felt braver about that possibility. After all, Sonic had promised it would be alright, and Chris can feel slightly comforted by the fact that at least the people who do know the truth still trust him. Mostly, anyway. He's having a little trouble with Knuckles, but Knuckles has always had trouble with trusting _anyone_...

Anyway, he's not sure if he'll be ready to sleep for a while. He scrolls back over the last twenty pages, errors highlighted in green and red all the way through. No wonder Topaz is always so tetchy. Chris knows he never pays as much attention to grammar as he should. Just the story. The story's what's most important, right? The grammar can all be fixed later.

His story. Only _not_ his. That's how he always thinks about it. It's not _his_ story he's writing – it's a formal report about the reality of world that's gone so crazy it might as well be science fiction. If Chris had his way it wouldn't be what he's writing at all. This latest little masterpiece, (as Grandpa always jokingly calls it is someone else's tale. Several "someone's".

And it isn't fiction. Not really. At least he doesn't _think _it is. It just feels like it sometimes, because everything in it is so wild he can hardly comprehend it ever happening in real life. Only it did happen, and he was there. He was actually a part of it. Twelve years ago, he had watched the sky twisting and shattering into fragments, and watched, terrified, as a thousand people, Humans, Mobians, everyone, fell into the void between the worlds, screaming...

And now he has to write it down so that GUN can rip it to pieces again and remove everything that's important. As if there's any sense in trying to get people to calm down anymore.

He needs a damn coffee.

And it's turning out to be way harder to put onto paper than he had anticipated. Everything he's written down so far feels… simplified compared to what really happened. There's still too much to say.

Chris leans back in his chair and fixes his eyes on the screen. Maybe, he thinks, he shouldn't be doing this…

Maybe it's too late to be thinking that maybe he shouldn't be doing this.

Maybe he should just stuff the publishers and… no. No, he couldn't do that.

Damn it. There's so much he has to say: a novelisation featuring eyewitness account of the story that had had every newspaper in Station Square –no, more like every newspaper in the United States– buzzing for fourteen months. The stuff that's still going on right now. Stick your hand out of a window when the sky is changing colour and you can feel it. Not much, but it's there. Your skin tingles and the air tastes like electricity. The two floors below him are still being rebuilt after the hurricane that came in from the west coast twelve months ago. It's never been the same as it used to be. Not since the two worlds started merging together and all hell broke loose because of it.

All that, and they're worried about his _grammar_?

This isn't like his historical fiction novels or the critical-guides to local scientific discoveries. All those are letters and stories where he knows everything that's going to happen. This is a different kind of story because it's still being written. This is a story about real life and he really isn't in control of… well, of anything at all. He can only write his story the way he'd seen it happening. What did he know about the rest? Sure, you could write a whole book and just focus on one person (like Sonic or Shadow) and do fine, that's easy enough, but it's not like you'd really have the _whole_ story. Because what one person thinks all this means isn't necessarily the same as what someone else thinks it means and what you think might be something completely different to what the author wanted you to think… right?

Okay, did any of that make any sense at all?

The thing that really bugs him is that this whole thing is 80% publicity stunt. He doesn't like that, but Scarlet said it was a good idea. And Scarlet knows what she's talking about, most of the time, right?

'The story's asking to be written. What with all the to-do there was and the papers covering it up and everything, people want to know what REALLY happened. And you can tell them. You were _there_. You saw it happen, first hand. All the things they've tried to keep covered up. They can't hide from the facts forever, right, Thorndyke?'

'_Yeah…, I guess. But—'_

'_So we'll do it, right? People deserve to know the truth, Chris, and I don't know about you, but I'm not happy to sit here in the dark for all eternity without knowing.' _

He's not sure why Scarlet's so eager about it all but maybe she's right. Maybe people deserve to know.

'Yeah. Well… them and me both, I guess.'

Chris knows Scarlet trusts him to know "what the public wants". She calls Chris her golden boy. It's no secret. Chris can write the stories that the others don't, because he was there when they all happened.

He probably should've stuck to building portals. He understands portals. And history. History he can do.

It's pitch black out there. Probably cold. He should go home now, before Helen starts to worry.

_Not yet_, a voice tugs at his brain. _She knows just where you are, and you already called her three times earlier. Let's not go home yet._

'Hey there, Chris.'

Chris hesitates for just a moment, but does not turn around at the sound of the voice. He's heard it too many times before to be surprised by it, either. She has this way of getting into places virtually unseen, unheard and unfelt. You never know she's there until she's standing right behind you. Unless your name is Sonic and you have a reaction time faster than anybody else in the world.

'Hey, Rouge. Haven't heard from you in a while.'

'I've been around. Got a message for ya.'

'...What, no height jokes?'

'Sorry, kid, I think I ran out about halfway through my _last_ argument.'

Chris winces in sympathy. 'Knuckles again?'

'Knuckles again. Can you talk to him or something? Twenty years and the guy still can't let his damn guard down around me and that emerald. Honestly what _use_ is it to me now, anyway?'

'What makes you think he'll listen to me?'

'Well he's no less likely to than he is me, Chaos Boy.'

Chris winces, his fingers clattering unintentionally against his computer keys. '_Please_ don't call me that.'

'Why not? It's what the newspapers are calling you, right? Thanks to that Miss Garcia who's always hanging around here... you know if it weren't for you, she'd probably be grey haired and wrinkly by now. she should probably thank you.' There's a glitter of amusement in Rouge's eyes, and Chris finds himself wondering, not for the first time, what she'd look like now if it weren't for the Warp. '...And is it me or have you grown another inch?'

Oh har, har. Rouge you _know_ it's embarrassing and...' And too close to the truth to be comfortable. 'Just don't, okay?'

'Alright, alright. Sheesh, you need to get some sleep. You'll start biting people's heads off again.'

Chris leans back in his chair, still staring at the blur of letters on is computer screen. They don't make much sense to him. 'Figures. We're living in a world where time itself is grinding to a halt, and yet for some reason we still need to sleep... So why are you here, anyway?'

'Like I said: Playing messenger.' Rouge doesn't sound pleased. 'Tails wants to talk to you. It's about the portal.'

Chris freezes again.

He should know better, he realises, than to get even the slightest bit excited. Tails is _always_ contacting him about the portal and it usually has nothing to do with what he wants the contact to be about. It'll be a burst conduit or a bunch of charts that need analysis. Another progress report of absolutely no progress whatsoever.

Chris has given up a long time ago on there _ever_ being _any_ progress. '..Did he say why?'

'Nope. He sounded in a hurry though. Wants you to get there fast. You should go.'

'I... I know, I just...'

'Don't want to get your hopes up?' rouge picks up a spark plug on the desk and turns it over and over in her hands, examining it as a collector might examine a rare jewel. 'Or maybe you just don't wanna get _his_ hopes up.'

Whoever said that Rouge was bad at perceiving people? 'We knew when we started how unlikely the portal working would be, it was a long shot...'

Rouge grunts under her breath, putting the spark plug down again having ascertained that it's nothing valuable. 'Well, it's not like time is anything we have to worry about kid. We've got all the time in the universe, and sooner or later that portal is gonna hit the right note. Maybe this is that "sooner or later"?'

Chris hesitates. Because he knows it couldn't be. It _can't_ be.

Except that he knows that's wrong. It _could_ be. In fact at some point in the future it is almost guaranteed to be.

When your time is unlimited, and you have the dice in your hand, sooner or later you're going to roll a six. '...Alright. I need you to find Sonic for me, though. See if you can find him before I get there. We'll meet you at the Lab.'

'Urgh. What am I? Your personal messaging service?'

'Since someone took out the radio transmitter for the whole town last month? Yes, Rouge, you are.'

'Huh.' Rouge pauses, and then frowns a little more intently for a second. 'Seriously, you _have_ grown. You're... what, fifteen now? Sixteen? I mean we're all hitting an average of about... one sixteenth as fast as we should be aging, and that's decreasing all the time. Technically I should be an old lady by now.'

'Oh, come on, thirty six isn't _that _old.' Chris looks around for his coat, can't see it, and decides to risk the mile run back to the house without it. The storms he has to worry about don't care much about whether or not he's wearing his jacket, anyway.

As he reaches out to close the window, he notices the potted plant sitting there, buds just on the verge of blooming. Chris pauses for just a second as he sees it, caught between smiling and frowning, like always. That plant had been about to bloom for over fifteen years. He's never been able to figure it out – why some plants still grow and others don't, but he supposes he should be grateful. Otherwise they all probably would've starved to death ten years ago.

'Kind of unfair really, isn't it?' Rouge says. 'The world has stopped changing, and yet _we're_ getting older.'

'Cheer up. It'll stop soon enough. You know it will.' Chris answers, and he's right. People have been slowing down for months. Many of them stopped altogether about a year ago. It's the younger people who are managing to drag a few more years out of their steadily congealing timeline.

Christopher Thorndyke will be twenty one years old on the sixteenth of July. His body is fifteen years old. He has pretty much accepted that he's never going to get much older than this, and that he's lucky that his body could push on this far. Most people's bodies had resisted the time warp which was steadily dragging the entire universe to a halt.

Chris feels his heart skipping a beat. Maybe, just maybe, all of that is about to change.

He pauses and looks back at his computer screen.

What had REALLY happened on that day five years ago? If he knew all that, then this book would probably have been three times as long… The portal opened, he remembered that. And sonic should've gone home except... he didn't. He didn't because Chris hadn't wanted him to. And because of that everything had started to change. The world stopped moving. Things stopped changing. The two worlds ground into one another and phenomenon happened that nobody could explain.

The two worlds had ended. Because a twelve year old boy hadn't been able to let go of his best friend. Sometimes, Chris wishes that people _did_ know. That his friends would blame him for it and not be so damned understanding. But the fact is none of them know why their two worlds coming together had happened in the first place. None of them know why the world is ending, slowly and surely over a period of years and decades, before their eyes.

And yet he's being expected to write about it...

He needs to know more. All that stuff he's supposed to have seen but didn't understand. What's the point of describing something if you can't even explain it yourself? What's the point of telling a story if you don't have all the answers? There are too many loose ends he needs to tie up. Too many holes.

Luckily, Chris thinks, he knows some people who might be able to fill them. And then some. If he can get to them, and then get them to talk…

If it's _right_ to get them to talk... if it's possible.

Maybe it is.


End file.
